Terrible diseases

Okay, so I was reading Dinosaur Comics (no, I am not afraid to cite my source for this information), and today’s comic mentions some terrible diseases. These include dacryorrhea, a condition that causes you to cry all the time, and fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva, which causes all your soft connective tissue turns into bone. (Apparently, a typical precursor for this disease is small big toes. Why?) However, the worst of the three, in my opinion, is Capgras delusion.

True, it’s hard for a disease to be worse than one that turns you into a living statue by middle age, but I think it’s because Capgras is psychological that makes it the most terrifying. People with Capgras delusion become convinced that their closest friends and relatives are not who they say they are, but are impostors who both look and act the same as the originals.

Not only does that score high on the Weirdness criterion for terrible diseases, but it’s also really up there in regard to the Turns Your Life Into an Episode of the Twilight Zone factor as well.

I did a little more research into this field, and discovered two more strange disorders. The first is Alice in Wonderland syndrome, which sounds like it could describe any number of bizarre delusions. It turns out that it covers a range of disorienting sensory mutations; the most prominent symptom is a “metamorphosis” of the body, wherein parts of one’s body, especially the hands and head, seem to grow or shrink. The second major symptom is altered visual perception, so that, for instance, dogs appear very small like rats, or hallways seem infinitely long. Other symptoms can include a feeling that the ground is porous or spongy under one’s feet, and distorted perception of time. It is basically like tripping on acid all the time. But without the quasi-religious transcendental experiences.

The last horrible affliction I’ll describe jumped out at me because of its name: Impossible syndrome. How would you like to hear that from a doctor? “I’m sorry, sir, but you have Impossible Syndrome.” (He could also call it Chondrodysplasia situs inversus imperforate anus polydactyly. Maybe that would be worse.) Luckily for you, only one case of Impossible syndrome has ever been reported – a premature and stillborn infant with an impossibly extensive range of sickening deformations.